CA Technologies is focusing on its systems management reach into the cloud. CA Technologies signaled to its extensive user group that it is executing its plan to extend systems management products into the cloud Monday.

On the second day of its 7,000-attendee CA World 2010 conference in Las Vegas, it announced four products in the Cloud-Connected Management Suite to help a traditional enterprise “bridge the gap” between data center operations and the public cloud. In doing so, it attempted to reposition the software firm formerly known as just CA. It wants to be a more forward-looking company, helping customers gain access to the next generation of business computing.

O’Malley said “shoppers for cloud services will be able to pull performance statistics for difference services in the Cloud Insight product and compare and contrast services. If users favor one metric over another for their business, say security, they can weight it more heavily in the index, then view their prospects through that filter. If they value speed of virtual server response, or consistency of availability, they can view services through those filters.”

“We believe cloud services are going down the path of manufacturing’s supply chain,” he noted. In effect there will be an IT supply chain of cloud services and “customers will need to understand the services available,” he said.